Group Reflective Blog

There were four members in our group Hannah Cummins, Iwan Evans, Roisin Stewart and me Rookshanara Khanum.
Our science concept was Food Chains and ESDGC. It is aimed at upper Foundation Phase and KS2. Our animation was inspired by the creature comfort animation.  The animation will sound like a nature documentary and have interviews with each of the animals in the food chain.
We were initially going to use 5 characters with a narrator but then decided it would be more humorous if the narrator was actually in the scenes.  Our characters are Mr Sun the energy source, Lady Grass the Producer, Monsiuer Grasshopper the primary consumer, Mrs Mouse the secondary consumer, Mr Owl the tertiary consumer and finally Tarquin Beefheart our presenter.We are not using green screening as it is very sensitive to light and technical. The set we will be using was made by hand using cardboard, foam, coloured paper and acrylic paint. The design is based on a familiar habitat for a simple food chain. A habitat that would fit our food chain. The conflict that the characters are having are survival and seeking attention. The conflict will be resolved by giving them time to say their piece and run away before their predator eats them. We will give each character their own voice and have narration from the presentor throughout the video. We will also use a background score of Vivaldi's four seasons as it fits the topic well and is familiar to the audience as it is a well known composition. We should avoid complicating the process as we have enough to deal with as it is with sound, visuals, making, lighting, editing and filming. We should keep in mind the skills and techniques we have been shown throughout this module by our lecturer and use them to the best of our ability to produce our final product.


Limitations

The limitations for our project was time and technical issues. We also encountered belbin's model of team members.

 

 

Story Boarding

A story board helps to map out what the script will look like visually and add graphics to the narration. It saves money as it is a cheap way of seeing the animation unfold without having to make the models or filming and then not using the film.

Below is a sample of the story boarding I did for our animation.

Story board depicting final line-up of characters

Group Meetings

Meeting 1
In this initial group meeting we discussed science concepts that we could animate and base our story line on. After brainstorming we settled on the concept of food chains and picked a basic food chain to use. We decided to research the animals that we were going to include in the food chain to make sure that they were scientifically correct. in terms of what they eat and where they live etc. We also discussed possible roles for each member of group. Such as Script writer, character/model maker, set maker, camera person, mover and voices etc.

Meeting 2
Assigned roles to members in group. Iwan was assigned the role of script writer, Iwas assigned the role of set design and making and the credits ets, Hannah was assigned the role of taking shots using zu3d  and Roisin was given the role of creative director. They were also assigned the joint role of making characters  After finalizing the food chain we were going to use and the animals that we were going to make we discussed features to have for the characters. We discussed the type of stop motion to use and played with the different materials available and decided to use claymation animation.

Meeting 3

I brought the sets along to this meeting to show the group what I had made and for us to make a final choice on. We realized that some roles would need to be worked on by more than one person or would need input from all members of group in order to achieve it on time and to the best quality that we could.. Hannah had trouble finding clay and so she and  Roisin hadn't started making the models until this actual meeting.. As I had leftover green clay I made  the grasshopper character and props at home and brought it with me to the meeting. Iwan and I looked at the script and how to improve it whilst the girls made their two characters each.

Earlier versions of the characters in our animation made during an animation seminar seminar.






Final clay models for animation.

Meeting 4

Came across problems during the production and shooting of the animation that we had not realised that we would have such as lighting reflecting of background or being to bright or dark to see the characters actions etc. This took along time to combat as there were other groups in the same room and each group needed different lighting which was difficult to work with. In hindsight we could have asked to move to a room on our own if we had just asked. This would have helped the fussing about with bits of foam and cloth to block the light which ate into our production time. We recorded all the characters voices on a programme called audacity and exported it using a mp3 or wav file and got an embed code from archive.com to put on to our blog and animation. However trying to amalgamate the sound to the voices in the right places for each scene and character was to ambitious for novices like us. Our over ambitious idea to lip sync the characters just using the zu3d software and the characters movement cost us the whole day and wasted valuable time. However I managed to learn how to record directly on to the ZU3D software using the information provided by our teacher on moodle as a supplement to our friday lessons therefore we as a group decided to delete the audacity file.

Meeting 5

We decided as a group to start filming again as it would be better if we made the narrator in to a character instead of a voice over as it would give us more animating scope.

Meeting 6 Final Project

We finished filming all the animations using ZU3D and recorded the character voices on ZU3D voice recorder after making adjustments on script. Edited and matched sound to film as a group. It took contributions from all of us to figure out how to use the many functions of zu3d on the laptop as it was too much for one person. I am so glad that we have a finished working animation that we are happy with.

Evaluation of personal learning

I have gone from being scared of writing a blog to solving issues and problems that we have had with our animation using what I have been taught in class and the research I have done around the topic. I had thought that the other members of my group would be far more advanced in using the software that our lecturer had shown us to use for animation. However I found that my interest and enjoyment in the creative technology we were using, helped me to learn and retain things so I could help my group. I was able to show my group how to import sound for background music. I also learned how to record directly on to the zu3d animation from the example video that our lecturer placed on our e-learning cite called Moodle. The insert sound button and the direct reord functions were used on the zu3d instead of using the audacity sound clip that we had made as it was causing problems in matching speech to characters. I personally found websites that had good audio files and learnt how to enbed the audio tracks and insert them to ZU3d. Bruner (1966) states that action and interaction with environment, teacher and peers help the learners to move from working with objects to iconic and symbolic representations of salient points. Csikszentmihalyi, (1990) describes one positive emotion of increased learning as flow. This is when a learner is fully immersed in what they are doing.
I feel as I have experienced Csikszentmihalyi's (1990) flow as the characteristics of enerzised focus, full involvement and success in the process of the activity remained with me throughout. I believe that flow kept me going when we encountered lighting difficulties and other technical difficulties initially and throughout the production of the film.

 

Green Screening

Green Screening which is also known as chroma keying is the use of special effects to create a set or background for a film or animation. It is a process where either two images or video streams are put together. It is done using a green sheet or blue material usually as they are colours that contrast the most with human skin tones. Any colour can be used they just have to be uniform and distinct. The important thing is to avoid using colours that are on the background material. Zu3d software allows you to take shots of visual images with a green background and import or use images from the media library on zu 3d. Green screening gives you the scope to have a background that is from fantasy or real life that would take time to make or would not be achievable with solid materials. In class a piece of green cloth was used and draped over a piece of cardboard to experience green -screening as novices. However there were creases on the green material which reflected the light and affected the chroma-keying. The video below helped me understand the process of green screening clearly.

Session 9          

Academic Research 

The advancement of the technological age and access to new learning tools necessitates the integration of creative technology into education. However, the prospect of planning for and providing a learning environment which promotes innovation and collaboration, whilst embracing new technological tools, can be daunting for practitioners. This can be due to the somewhat elusive notion of creativity and innovation in education (Barlex, 2011). So can stop-motion animation affect and influence the realisation of creative technological learning? Moreover, does it make an invaluable contribution to engaging, collaborative learning?

In order to answer the question of whether stop-motion animation can affect and influence the realization of   creative technological learning we need to explore what creative technological learning is and how it can be fostered. The contributions it makes to engaging, collaborative learning and whether or not it makes an invaluable contribution will depend on the learning outcomes of activity. 

Creative technological learning is the learning done using technology in a creative way in order to engage learners in learning. As we live in a technology driven world education is competing for attention with all the latest electronic gadgets that learners can get their hands on. Therefore it is imperative that learners attention is captured and sustained in education with the positive use of creative technology. Creative technological learning changes with society depending on what the society that uses it deems as creative. Beetham and Sharpe (2007) state that learning technologists help accelerate the learning cycles in education in order for it to keep up with the short cycles in society such as scientific and employment demands as well as youth culture. Animation is one of three technological forms the other two are multimedia and virtual reality, Animation is the  dynamic representation that shows incremental change over time (Ainsworth, 2008).  Animation is a form of innovative technology that can be used as a tool for creative learning. Tversky, Morrison, & Betrancourt, 2002: Moreno & Mayer, 2002 (cited in Ainsworth, 2008) state that research shows that animation does help learning but under certain conditions.   Lowe (2003) states that animation is only a useful creative technological learning tool if the processes are supported with 'instructional enrichment.' Lowe (2003) also states that animation will only be effective if the learner is helped to extract the relevant learning required for a particular topic from the animations so that they can internalize it into their existing knowledge base.  However Ainsworth (2008) argues that animation can be used to learn successfully only if the complexities are overcome. In order to harness the positive affects and influences of stop- motion animation the disadvantages and distractions that detract from the main learning intentions need to be minimized. According to Ainsworth (2008)  many factors influence learning using animation and success of any application is also dependent on the way these factors interact. Ainsorth (2008) suggests six different levels of explanation to help with understanding learning through animation which are: expressive explanation, cognitive explanation rhetorical and motor and perceptual explanation , strategic explanation, meta -cognitive explanation, 

Although stop-motion animation can provide learners with dynamic information that static graphics cannot it is the learners extraction of the relevant information and its incorporation in to their existing knowledge base that is key to whether or not it is a successful tool for learning. Stop-motion animation can affect and influence the realization of creative technological learning if supported by teachers and if it matches the learners learning interests and styles. I believe the constant narrative provided by our lecturer in conjunction with the sample animations have helped us complete our group task of making an animation ourselves. Even though we have been exposed to many new software and technical words and processes the continuous narrative delivered in the lessons in conjunction with example animation clips and support has helped me grow in my learning. Animation can make an invaluable contribution to engaging, collaborative learning if the learners collaborate and remain engaged enough in the learning to assimilate their external learning into their internal knowledge base as I have done during the process of making our group animation. Reiber, (1991 cited in Ainsworth, 2008) state that animation can  motivate some people to learn.This was true in my case however I also found that animation helped me cognitively as well, as I had to learn through experience (Tversky et al, 2002). I made myself familiar with our learning objectives for our animation task and the criteria needed for it which helped in the production process of the group animation.

References

Ainsworth, S. (2008). How do animations influence learning? In D. Robinson & G. Schraw (Eds.), Current Perspectives on Cognition, Learning, and Instruction: Recent Innovations in Educational Technology that Facilitate Student Learning. pp 37-67. Information Age Publishing.

Beetham, H., & Sharpe,  R. (2007). Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and Delivering E-learning. Oxford: Routledge.

Lowe, R.K. (2003), Animation and learning: selective processing of information in dynamic graphics Learning and Instruction Vol 13  157–176

Sound to Create Atmosphere 

Emotion, atmosphere, scene setting, voice acting, details to the scene are all essential to animation as without them your experience will be incomplete. Visuals only capture your attention for a moment where as sound can keep your attention for longer. A real life example would be the radio which people still like to listen to even though there are no visuals to see with it. If sound is used effectively it adds texture to any narrative and retains the audiences attention for longer.

Design of mini set for animation

As a group we decided it would be best to make our set by hand instead of green screening as green screening was new to us all and we felt that a traditional set would work best with clay animation. 

From our initial meetings I was given the responsibility of designing and making our mini set.

Whilst designing the set I tried to keep in mind what kind of habitat the animals in our food chain would live in. I made the following four sets for the group to choose from. We unanimously decided to choose the fourth one, as it was the set that was the most aesthetically pleasing and fit our narrative and science concept the best. I enjoyed the creative freedom I had in the designing and making of this particular task. I was also very glad that I had managed to make a set that everyone was pleased with.

Set design 1                                         Set design 2

 

 Set design 3                                     Set design 4 and final choice. 

Once the set was chosen my next steps were to make props to make the set more like a natural habitat. Below are a sample of the types of props I made.

This is what the final set that we filmed on looked like. It is all coming together can't wait to see the final animation.

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final project
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZsJBLYFYvo&feature=youtu.be

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Today was great! There were so many wonderful animations. They were all different and everyone had used different skills that we had been taught in our seminars. Different groups used different technical aspects and tackled problems that arose differently. It was lovely to hear that a lot of people had similar problems to us. I'm glad I picked this module as not only have I improved my use of creative technology and improved my learning I was able to see peoples creativity come to life.